You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
One rarely finds today scholarship of a level found in this fine book. A labor of love, in the best traditions of learning and erudition, one can everywhere observe in it care for exactness of translation and interpretation yet never the ruminative handling of detail that dries up a book's flavor.
This reviewer's chief interest in the book lay in the psychological aspects of Nietzsche's thinking and the manner in which Mr. Kaufmann handled these. While not an apologia for Nietzsche, it would seem important that the disclosures in this book be more widely known. Apparently the entire association of Nietzsche with Nazism was due largely to the activities of his sister Frau Forster-Nietzsche, a rabid anti-Semite, who plainly distorted many of Nietzsche's statements to fit her own savage prejudice. The author discusses with great clarity the whole notion of 'the blond beast' and 'the Nietzsche master race' which have come, in the popular mind, to be synonymous with Nietzsche. The true nature of Nietzsche's attitude on these subjects appears to be almost entirely counter to the popular view.
The author's sensitiveness to psychoanalytic implications is everywhere evident and one can readily see that he has much more than a bowing acquaintance with psychoanalytic theory. He takes issue with Stekel's implications that Nietzsche's love for Cosima Wagner was based on a triangular relationship, that Nietzsche was primarily motivated by latent homosexuality. Attempts to prove